Decisions about lumping vs. splitting of the scope of systematic reviews of complex interventions are not well justified: a case study in systematic reviews of health care professional reminders

Ref ID	389
First Author	M. C. Weir
Journal	JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing	2012
URL	https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00394-5/fulltext
Keywords	Mental health External validity Overlapping reviews/redundancy
Problem(s)	Review question not justified / important Redundant / overlapping / duplicated review question; leads to research waste
Number of systematic reviews included	31
Summary of Findings	Review authors from the included reviews poorly justified their decisions about the scope of their reviews and tended not to cite other similar reviews. Most reviews (77%) were "split" (specified a certain subgroup under population, study design, outcomes, setting, and condition) as opposed to "split" (assessed the effect of reminder interventions for all health professionals on all outcomes, settings, conditions, and study designs).
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results?	Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study?	Yes